Equity benchmark indices were up by nearly 1 percent during early hours on Monday following handsome gains by private banks.
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 376 points or 1.02 percent at 37,396 while the Nifty 50 edged higher by 107 points or 0.99 percent at 11,009.
Except for Nifty pharma which slipped by 1.25 percent and FMCG which was down by 0.2 percent, all sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the positive terrain with Nifty private bank and financial service up by 2.2 percent, PSU bank by 1.9 percent and IT by 1.2 percent.
Among stocks, HDFC Bank surged by 4.07 percent to Rs 1,143.20 per share after the private sector lender reported nearly 20 percent jump in its Q1 net profit at Rs 6,659 crore.
ICICI Bank was up by 3.2 percent, IndusInd Bank by 2.3 percent and State Bank of India by 2.2 percent. The other prominent gainers were Britannia, HCL Technologies, Infosys and Grasim.
However, Sun Pharma dipped by 3.5 percent to Rs 486 per share while Cipla was down by 1.7 percent. Tata Motors, Titan, Nestle India, Hindustan Lever and Maruti Suzuki too traded with negative bias but with thin margins.
Meanwhile, Asian shares were downbeat as a spike in global coronavirus cases hung over markets. Investors awaiting efforts at the outcome of a European Union summit to put together fiscal stimulus plans to fight the pandemic.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan slipped by 0.2 percent while Japan’s Nikkei faltered by 0.35 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index by 0.4 percent.
